Crimson Desert is raising some AI-brows with a bevy of suspiciously generated-looking art

Crimson Desert is, by many accounts, a video game. A not necessarily good one, a perhaps just ok to occasionally baffling video game that appears to be big for the sake of winning a pissing contest. It is also potentially a video game that is not being entirely honest about certain art assets being human-made or not.

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If you ask Yoshi-P, kids don't care about Final Fantasy anymore because they're taking too long to come out

Last month, a post caught some kind of virus and did the rounds, pondering why kids don't care about Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest so much anymore, wondering what they do plan now, and anecdotally findering that most of them just play Pokemon. And I truly have to wonder if Final Fantasy 14 producer Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida saw said post, given that in a recent bout of interviews with several key Final Fantasy figureheads in preparation for the next Dissidia game, he himself flat out acknowledged that the youths these days don't care as much because of the series' infrequent release schedule.

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God is dead and I am a bullet hell boss of my own making in the physics-based dicerolling roguelike DeeSicks

I'm going to say it: bullet hells are more stressful than Souls-likes. Why are there 10,000 orbs approaching me, promising me misery and death! And I have to both tactfully dodge them while also staging a front myself? The visual information alone is enough to deteriorate the mind, memorising a list of attack patterns from some big dude with a sword seems like chump change by comparison. So this leaves me quite sweet on DeeSicks, a roguelike take on the game with physics-based dice rolling where god has died and you become your own boss.

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All those upcoming spin-offs aside, Pocketpair apparently aren't all that interested in a Palworld "media empire"

Palworld has honestly lived, and thrived, a lot longer than I honestly expected to. I guess the people really do want Pokemon with guns! As since its launch two years ago (ignore the coffee I've spat over my screen at that passage of time), there have been announcements for spin-offs in the form of Stardew Valley if it were Pokemon but actually it's Palworld, a dating sim that started as a joke but will now be real, and more recently, a card game. Despite all of that expansion, however, developer Pocketpair say they have "no desire to be a media empire."

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"This progress will not be linear": Mega Crit outline their patching process for Slay the Spire 2 after ruffling some feathers

Slay the Spire 2 is, quite notably, a game in early access. This means many things, but most importantly it means that any changes that are made aren't necessarily final, they're just more tests to see what does and doesn't work. The roguelike deckbuilder's first proper update went live yesterday, adding in a phobia mode with some bespoke assets and making a whole bunch of tweaks. It's that second part that has riled up the feathers of some spire slayers (just have a brief trawl of recent reviews), prompting developer Mega Crit to take a moment to explain just how they go about their "patching methodology."

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What are we all playing this weekend?

I truly hope the sun has got his hat on this weekend as I'm cycling out to family in the countryside and I'd rather not arrive soaked through by rain. Granted, I will be arriving soaked through with sweat, but I am happy with this outcome. For reasons I can't quite fathom, self-wetted clothes are bearable, weather-wetted clothes are intolerable.

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"As soon as it fired up, he'd get up and go to lunch": How Age of Empires' developers tested mission difficulty

When bosses have assessed my work over the years it's usually taken the form of nervously watching their cursor bounce around a Google Doc. They would delete overwrought lines here, add detail to unclear statements there, and sometimes strike our intros that weren't getting to the point – thank goodness I learned my lesson there. It's a nerve-wracking and humbling experience (especially when you've managed to misspell 'RTS').

Naturally, every job has its own assessments, but the level designers working on Age of Empires at Ensemble Studios faced a novel one: studio head Tony Goodman's lunch break.

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Funi Raccoon is another wonderful pile of rubble to sift through on your computer

This much is certain: I am a raccoon, somewhere in Norwich, and I am trying to catch a train. The trains are regular but they move past at such speed I can barely see them. I attempt to board and am launched like a squashy varmint bullet, hurtling beyond the level boundary into oozy pink checkerboard oblivion. The drunken background music alternates between welcoming me to the Water Zone and telling me to get the fuck out. The Easter Island head on the platform grumbles at me, so I hurl it into the sea.

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Crimson Desert is "like riding a bike", says Pearl Abyss PR boss, possibly in the sense that bikes also don't run on Intel Arc GPUs

Crimson Desert's controls aren't a pain in the bum. You just need to get used to them. You also need to get used to not being able to run the game if you've got an Intel Arc graphics card. You instead need to get used to asking for a refund on this game you can't run. These are all things Pearl Abyss have said about their huge MMO-ish RPG today, March 20th.

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Following a demo, DLC-sized New Vegas mod Fallout Chicago is aiming for a full release in 2027

Earlier this week, the modders behind a Fallout: New Vegas expansion called Fallout Chicago released their first demo. With that milestone out of the way, they're certainly not resting on their laurels. They've put out a roadmap indicating that they're hoping to have all three acts of the mod's main story ready to go for a full release in the latter half of 2027.

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"A balancing paradigm I often look at is Starcraft": Total War: Medieval 3 won't lean too hard on rock-paper-scissors combat, says creative director

Creative Assembly's Total War games offer up a wide spread of factions, from rampaging Gauls to furtive and disgusting Wood Elves, but they're all a little beholden to the ancient game of rock-paper-scissors: spears beat cavalry, cavalry beat swords, swords beat spears.

I think Creative Assembly generally do an impressive job of softening that triangular countering logic by means of terrain considerations, flanking, morale and other supporting mechanics. Cavalry won't necessarily beat swords if the cavalry are all tuckered out and spooked. And then you have wildcards, like heroes and war machines, who can mess with the logic more dramatically: Rock paper Mortis Engine! Still, I can't deny that I often feel drained on firing up a DLC-fresh Total War army and realising that, yep, I'm roshamboing again.

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Netflix's Assassin's Creed TV show is about assassins roaming Ancient Rome and its hero might meet Nero

It's been a while since Ubisoft and Netflix announced they were doing an Assassin's Creed TV show. The good news is that filming's now kicked off on it, with Ubisoft taking the opportunity to confirm that Ancient Rome's the setting for this stabby story.

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US regulator won't follow Europe's lead and stick higher age ratings on games with loot boxes and daily quests, since it might confuse parents

Last week, the folks behind PEGI (Pan European Game Information) - the age rating system used for games in Europe outside of Germany - announced plans to update their age rating criteria with four new categories. Games which feature the likes of loot boxes, NFTs, or daily quests designed to push players into coming back because otherwise they'll miss out will automatically be given higher ratings. The ratings board's US equvivalent, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board), have now revealed that they won't be following suit at least for now, because they're concerned parents could end up scratching their heads.

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New Slay The Spire 2 patch will "make infinites harder to achieve" by letting the Doormaker eat your cards, amongst other surprises

Slay The Spire 2's first actual proper major update is upon us, an avalanche of balancing tweaks and fixes for the roguelite deckbuilder that has approximately two goals: making some of those insectile cards less appalling, care of the previously announced Phobia Mode, and dialling back the prevalence of infinites – that is, card combos with effects that allow you to carry on playing them forever in a single turn.

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"So that we don't flood the game with amazing loot": Marathon director defends Cryo Archive's weekend-only release in the name of balance, queue times and player prep

Marathon game director Joe Ziegler has posted a defence of the decision to release the game's new Cryo Archive map as a weekend-only event. The time restriction has understandably left the more casual Marathon players a bit miffed. It has driven our own Oisin into the arms of Peggle. But Ziegler argues that it's important for three reasons: encouraging players to prepare adequately, avoiding the "flooding" (hey, is this another Halo reference?) of the game's item economy with overpowered Cryo Archive rewards, and ensuring a consistent player pool for the purposes of speedy matchmaking.

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SteamOS update preview brings "initial support" for the Steam Machine, plus new power and Bluetooth tricks for Steam Decks

The SteamOS 3.8.0 update is available to try now on the Preview branch, and it’s the first to bring "initial support for the upcoming Steam Machine hardware." That is, of course, merely a passing mention of Valve’s reborn PC box in the 3.8.0 patch notes. Am I going to engage strong, some might say excessive optimism that this suggests its recent delay and subsequent release date uncertainty aren’t as damning as they look? Sod it, it’s Friday.

Those in search of more practical updates, and presumably own a Steam Deck, have much more to chew on. This is a wide-ranging patch, spanning a new graphics driver, improved support for OBS and Discord, better frame pacing with Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) tech, crash fixes, and a bunch of tune-ups for non-Valve handheld PCs, with plenty more besides. I’m most intrigued by the bullet point that promises "Preliminary support for hibernation," which – assuming it works like hibernation on a Windows laptop – would drastically reduce the frequency with which I pick up my Deck to find its battery dead, drained to emptiness by my thoughtless misuse of Sleep mode. Yes, Valve. Continue to enable my shortcomings.

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Crimson Desert patch stops bosses attacking you mid-revival, also takes aim at crashes and UI problems

Pearl Abyss have released the first proper update for their grand and obfuscatory open world RPG Crimson Desert, introducing a slew of tweaks for the game's many, many systems. The developers have added new finishing blows or follow-up attacks and skills for certain moves, and a new tutorial quest for a particular section in chapter 3, but the most important changes, I think, are the bug fixes and general attempts to make Crimson Desert less "like a product exploding at the waist with far too much stuff and an irritating tendency to avoid communicating anything to the player", as one critic put it. In particular, you may be relieved to hear that bosses can no longer beat you up while you're reviving.

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Subnautica 2's early access release date was "self-servingly" leaked by Krafton, "further damaging the game", claim lawyers for reinstated Unknown Worlds CEO

Well, it was never going to wrap up that neatly, was it? It turns out that the emergence of an internal memo revealing that Subnautica 2 is aiming for an early access release in May won't be the moment that the messy legal dispute between publishers Krafton and three former lead developers on the game - one of whom's now been reinstated - ends.

Lawyers representing Unknown Worlds co-founders Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire, and Ted Gill - the three leads - have now accused Krafton of having "intentionally leaked" the memo from Steve Papoutsis, the exec the publishwrs put in charge after firing Cleveland, McGuire, and Gill last year.

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CD Projekt Red's Hadar has moved onto the prototyping stage, as The Witcher 4 team expands

Project Hadar… It's a completely new game from CD Projekt Red, one that the Cyberpunk 2077 studio has been tinkering away at in the background for a while now. And yet! We know next to nothing about it, not even the genre (yes I know it's probably an RPG given CD Projekt's whole thing, I'm creating mystique here). But today was CD Projekt's most recent earnings report, so now we know… not much much, though we do have a better idea of where it's at.

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Crimson Desert can perform well on PC, but you’ll need to win its crash lottery first

The words "consensus" and "RPS treehouse" are normally alien to one another, as is apparent from all the blood splatter on every new RPS 100. Yet among those of us who’ve been playing open world everything-'em-up Crimson Desert, an agreement has formed that its vastness – its 150-odd gigabytes of ideas, mechanics, and sheer maximalist fantasy – can too easily feel unwieldy.

To a degree, the same is true of its PC performance. It’s not bad, and often balances its gleaming visuals with smooth framerates quite well. Good support for new (but not too new) flavours of DLSS and FSR, as well. It’s also prone to instability and inconsistency, and while it’s positively receptive to the right settings changes, even this requires navigating through some confusingly labelled upscaling options and possibly the most unusual implementation of ray tracing – or, more specifically, Ray Reconstruction – in all of PC gamedom.

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